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A chill ran down her spine.
She lowered her gaze, struggling to conceal her dismay. She had no idea why she had uttered such nonsense.
Her heart hammered so violently she thought her chest might tear open. The fear that he might hear it pounding made goosebumps break out across her skin.
Flustered and disoriented, Talia began to babble whatever came to mind.
“Disgusting to even consider, isn’t it? So stop forcing that foul draught on me. I’m only saying that’s how much… that’s how much I despise it….”
Her frantic scramble to cover her tracks only made her feel as if she were laying her true feelings bare, and heat rushed to the tips of her ears. She dragged her tongue over parched lips.
She sensed Varkas, who had been standing motionlessly, step toward the side of the bed. Even so, she could not bring herself to look up.
Doubtless he was staring at her in sheer disbelief. Only hours earlier she had thrashed about like someone possessed, and now she was spouting this sort of madness; he was bound to be disgusted. Perhaps his mouth was already twisted in a cold sneer.
As if pursued, she babbled on without coherence.
“Do you have any idea how vile it tastes? My stomach heaves every time I take it. Yet you keep pressing it on me, so I only said it to make you stop….”
“Talia.”
His voice resonated directly above her forehead, cutting her short.
She lifted her head in slow, rigid increments until eyes like a frozen lake at dawn filled her sight.
Looking down at her as if studying a mismatched puzzle piece, the man spoke in a low murmur.
“Come here. I’ll feed you.”
Talia blinked vacantly.
She could not wrap her mind around the words.
Bewildered, she looked down at the medicine bottle resting in his hand, then shifted her gaze toward his smooth lips.
A sudden, inexplicable thirst flared in her throat.
Talia glanced away, picking at her dry lips.
“I only meant….”
I didn’t mean it, don’t take it seriously. Just as she was about to mutter the excuse, he unstopped the medicine bottle.
Talia jerked her head up.
His clear, inscrutable eyes looked at her as if demanding confirmation of her intent. They were eyes that seemed to pierce straight through her, yet held nothing in return.
Without pulling that stony gaze from hers, he tipped the bottle to his lips.
Her chest seized.
If she told him to halt now, she could salvage at least the barest scrap of her dignity.
Had she not spent her entire life struggling not to surrender that very thing?
Stripped of that, she was truly nothing.
‘And yet….’
She peered up at him, her eyes trembling.
The memory of the day his mouth had brushed hers flashed through her mind. If parting with a handful of pride meant reliving that night once more….
Talia squeezed her eyes shut.
Then a broad hand, hard-knuckled, cradled the nape of her neck.
The scent of water, the sharpness of mint, and the draft of wind that never failed to make her uneasy brushed past her nose. Soon after, lips carrying the faint tang of bitter herbs and wildflowers pressed down over hers.
Once, that mouth had yielded only harsh words that cut her to the bone. When she was small, she had thought touching it would feel like pressing against a blade. Now, those same cruel lips were shattering every sense she possessed.
Talia caught handfuls of his shirt without realizing it.
He tilted her head back, crushing his mouth harder against hers. Talia, whose body had gone rigid, parted her lips under the insistent pressure against her cheeks. The thick herbal decoction poured over the tip of her tongue.
She winced as scorching bitterness flooded her palate, but an instant later, a smooth tongue thrust past her teeth.
Startled by the deep intrusion reaching toward her throat, she shoved at his chest, prompting the slick muscle to pull back slightly. Yet before she could draw breath, the soft flesh inside her cheek was pressed and flattened.
Talia shrank her neck from the strange friction. His broad tongue shifted course, sliding along the roof of her mouth before twining wetly with hers. Saliva gathered, unmanageable.
The bitter draft mingled with spit and spilled past the corner of her lips. Before shame could take hold, the tip of his tongue drove deep again.
Her throat tightened reflexively, pulling him inward. In an instant, the natural reflex to swallow degraded into something terrifyingly indecent.
She shuddered, a faint, wanton whimper slipping out that she never imagined she could produce. The slick, wet sounds seemed to soak through her eardrums.
Unable to endure the mounting force of it, Talia hammered her fists against his iron shoulders.
At last, his mouth pulled away. A clear strand stretched between them.
She stared at it, eyes quivering, before nervously lifting her gaze. His face remained calm, as though he were simply watching to see what she would do.
A dizzying confusion crashed over her.
Could that feverish kiss have been nothing more than her own delusion? While she sat paralyzed before a serenity so profound it made her doubt her senses, Varkas picked up the bottle and gave it a soft shake.
“There is more left.”
His low, beautiful voice carried a faint huskiness that grated against her ears.
Talia’s eyes widened, and she hastily dropped her gaze. Her temples pounded with heavy pulses. Speaking right against her ear, he demanded yet another piece of her pride.
“What shall we do with the rest?”
Talia picked at her tender lips, staring down into the flickering hearth.
After enduring the suffocating silence until she could barely breathe, she finally managed a nod. But he did not move.
After a long hesitation, Talia forced words through her constricted throat.
“…Feed me.”
In a breath, her head was tipped back.
The dark liquid rushed into her mouth at once. As she swallowed, an uncomfortable heat trailed down her throat.
Yet the stinging bitterness was swiftly swallowed up by wet heat.
Talia drew ragged, shuddering breaths, her fingers clutching his shirt.
The hot muscle searched every narrow recess without pause. Borne backward under his weight, she felt the bedsheets take her back.
Talia looked up at him in terror. She tried to push herself up, but she could not pull free of him for a single second.
With one hand braced against the mattress, Varkas leaned his weight over her, nursing continuously at her mouth.
In a face cast in deep shadow, only his two eyes shone luminous and pale. It felt as though she were submerged in cold flame. Her senses were dissolving, yet her heart grew desolate with dread.
“Part your lips wider.”
A damp murmur grazed the skin around her mouth.
Talia, staring up with trembling eyes, parted her jaws further.
His hot tongue scraped over hers at once, invading deep toward her throat. It lingered there, as though savoring the frantic gasps and helpless pulls of her swallows, before drawing back at a languid pace.
Her thoughts grew murky as the kiss went on.
When she turned her head aside to catch what little air remained, his fingers gathered a handful of her hair. Long fingers threaded through the strands, pulling with measured strength that bordered on pain. Even that held a terrifyingly filthy weight.
“Varkas….”
A voice like a broken plea mingled with her ragged breathing.
She did not even know what she was begging for. Looking up through wet lashes, she caught his slightly narrowed gaze. His rough palm trailed slowly up her damp neck.
Suddenly, a terrible curiosity reared inside her.
Had he ever touched anyone else like this?
The image of him kissing Ayla flashed through her mind.
He must have laid that woman down on a bed and taken her mouth, too.
Just as he had granted Talia's demand without a word, he would have answered hers in silence.
Because to him, an act like this likely meant nothing at all.
Something that felt like the collapse of her entire world was, to him, utterly inconsequential.
“…Why are you crying?”
His voice sank low and heavy as he released the lip he had been holding between his teeth.
A calloused thumb brushed the skin beneath her eye. Talia hid her gaze behind her lashes.
“…I’m tired. I want to sleep.”
A crease formed between Varkas’s brows before he slowly drew himself upright. He appeared so detached it was difficult to believe he was the same man who had been plundering another's mouth with such hunger only moments before.
He walked over to the window and pushed it wide. The cool, damp draft swept into the room, driving away the stagnant heat.
Talia stared vacantly at his silhouette etched against the dark, then turned her back to him and closed her eyes.
Her thoughts drifted and blurred.
When tomorrow comes, will I wake and tell myself it was only a dream again?
Dwelling on the hollow thought, she soon slid into unconsciousness.
“I gave strict orders for everyone to hold their tongues, so word of last night’s unfortunate affair will not leak.”
Varkas, gently patting Toruk as the stallion snorted, turned toward the Lord of Dorcaen.
The man pulled his lips into a smirk, his mouth rattling on.
“Even so, you have taken quite the remarkable wife. Where behind that angelic face does such a vicious temper—”
“Uzan Darken.”
The man went still, perhaps catching the note of warning running under Varkas’s tone.
Varkas added in a level voice:
“It would serve you best to begin by minding your own mouth.”
END